KPMG U.S. Unqualified Audit Opinion on Tether’s 2025 Financial Statements (Tether)

Tether reported that KPMG U.S. issued an unqualified opinion on Tether International’s 2025 U.S. GAAP financial statements, marking a shift from periodic reserve attestations to a full financial-statement audit. The audit tested assets, token-related liabilities, transactions, systems, ownership evidence, valuations and counterparties. Tether says it included physical inspection of its gold bars and showed reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814 billion at year-end. However, Tether did not release the statements themselves, so there is still much that is not known, such as accounting policies, reserve composition, and counterparty exposures. [Tether]

Use of Cash by Companies in the Euro Area in 2026 (ECB)

According to the latest European Central Bank (ECB) survey of 8,205 euro area consumer-facing merchants, cash acceptance has stabilized rather than continued its post-pandemic decline. 92% of firms with physical points of sale accepted cash in 2026, up from 90% in 2024, while 92% of current acceptors expect to continue over five years. Mobile-payment acceptance increased to 68% from 36% in 2024, alongside broadly unchanged card acceptance (88%). 25% of firms have taken measures to steer customers toward digital payments, and 48% with self-checkout terminals accept no cash at those terminals. Cash-access frictions—especially deposit/withdrawal inconvenience—are increasingly cited by non-acceptors, making cash infrastructure and cash-capable automation the principal unresolved constraints. [ECB]

Monetary Assurance, Payment Authority and the Payment Trust Architecture Design Space (Crunchfish)

Crunchfish published a paper arguing that every payment rests on two separable assurances—monetary assurance (sufficient value exists) and payment authority (the transaction is validly authorized)—whose representations can evolve independently, defining a “payment trust architecture design space”. It maps two dimensions: monetary assurance as “trusted assertion” (system-dependent) versus “trusted object” (independently verifiable), and payment authority as “trusted session” (session-bound) versus “trusted intent” (portable). Their four combinations yield distinct capabilities, generalized through the concept of “portable trust”. Crunchfish’s “governed offline” model is offered as the first practical instance. It gives monetary assurance and payment authority separate lifecycles: the former established in advance through reservation, the latter created locally as a “trusted intent” at payment. The broader principle is proposed as relevant to delegated and programmable payments, AI-agent transactions, and tokenized markets. [Crunchfish]

BTW if you want to see a complete database of my DFC-related posts going back years, including many that didn’t make the Daily Digest cut, click here.

FYI I produce a monthly digest of digital fiat currency (DFC) developments exclusively for the official sector (e.g., central banks, ministries of finance and international financial institution (e.g., the BIS, IMF, OECD, World Bank)) plus academics and firms that are active in the DFC space (commercial banks, technology providers, consultants, etc.). (DFCs include central bank digital currency (CBDC), stablecoins and tokenized deposits.) It goes out via email on the first business day of every month, and if you’re interested in being on the mailing list, please email me at john@kiffmeister.com.